Vietnamese immigrants Long Nguyen and Huong Ly came to the United States in 2000 for a fresh start. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous spiritual advisor would take advantage of them, leading to their murder.
Nguyen and Ly brought their family with them when they moved to Arlington, Texas. The area is home to a thriving Vietnamese community with roots dating back to the 1970s.
“The first wave of immigrants came after 1975, after the fall of Saigon. Some of them have adapted very well to society. Parents are trying to pass the legacy of Vietnam to America,” former Tarrant County prosecutor’s investigator Dr. An Truong told ‘Snapped,’ airing Sundays at 6/5c to Oxygen.
The couple opened a commercial sewing business. Their son-in-law, Chau Tran, was the face of the company, as he had the best English skills. Over the next decade, the company grew and eventually landed a contract with Disney. By 2011, however, their fortunes had dried up and they sought supernatural help to put them back on top.
“For a few thousand years, Asians believed in the god of luck and the god of money protection. If you pray to them, you will get more customers,” Dr. An Truong explained.
The family believed a curse had been placed on their business and the only way to get rid of it was with the help of a spiritual advisor. In a Vietnamese newspaper, they found an ad for Dephne Wright, who lived 250 miles from Houston.
“She announced that she could remove bad spells, she could cast spells, she could do all of that,” prosecutor David Alex told “Snapped.”
Tran traveled to meet her. Using a credit card tied to the sewing business, he paid Wright to remove the curse he believed was ruining the family business.
Despite Wright’s supposed mystical powers, the company’s finances continued to deteriorate. Tran asked Wright for more help, eventually racking up a debt of $280,000, according to court documents.
Then, at 7:30 a.m. on June 10, 2012, Tran called 911 to request a welfare check on her in-laws.
“Oh my God! You know what ma’am? My son and my wife, they say they looked in there, they say they saw it all fall apart,” Tran was heard saying on a recording of the call, which was obtained by “Snapped”.
Investigators found the apartment to be a mess. In the bedroom, Arlington Police Officer Gretchen Weller noticed bloody handprints on the wall next to a small closet. Inside were the bodies of Long Nguyen, 72, and Huong Ly, 63.
“They were tied up with duct tape, their heads and mouths taped. There was blood everywhere. In that split second, I knew they were dead,” Weller told “Snapped.”
Police investigators were stunned by the brutality of the crime. The couple appear to have been beaten by a blunt object. The apartment showed signs of a life or death struggle and was ransacked.
“It appeared that an attack occurred as soon as they entered their apartment. Something happened at the front door because there was blood there,” said Arlington police investigator Diana Brown.
Drug paraphernalia, including a partially smoked marijuana cigarette, were laid out on a table. A blue bandana was wrapped around a beer bottle, suggesting gang involvement.
“It was too perfect as a crime scene. It was too organized to the point where I had every reason to believe it was gang activity so we speculated it was staged,” the former detective said. from Arlington Police Department Byron Stewart to “Snapped.”
Chau Tran told investigators that the whole family had gathered the night before to celebrate Nguyen’s birthday. He said his in-laws stayed until 10:30 p.m. before being driven home by a family member.
An autopsy revealed that Nguyen and Ly had blunt force injuries. The ultimate cause of death, however, was suffocation from the yards of duct tape wrapped around their heads, according to the Toronto Sun newspaper.
Investigators learned that the deceased couple had $1 million in life insurance policies. Chau Tran was one of their beneficiaries. Detectives spoke to him again on June 13 and found him to be cooperative and his alibi was confirmed by several members of his family.
DNA collected from the crime scene produced no matches. Without new leads, the case came to nothing.
But on October 12, 2015, nearly three and a half years after the murder, a DNA match finally arrived that was removed from the marijuana cigarette found at the crime scene. It belonged to 20-year-old Willie Guillory. He had recently been arrested for stealing a horse, according to a Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate. KTVT.
Guillory was 16 at the time of the murder and had never been arrested for a crime and was therefore excluded from CODIS, the national DNA database for criminal offenders. He was arrested for a parole violation and taken back to Arlington for questioning, where he made a full confession.
Willie told detectives that at the time of the murder he was living in Houston with his uncle, 49-year-old Bobby Guillory. On the night of June 9, 2012, his uncle took him on the 3 hour drive to Arlington. Her uncle had been hired by Dephne Wright to shake up Long Nguyen and Huong Ly.
“I met Dephne through my uncle Bobby. My uncle went into his office and started talking to her and she said people owed her money and she wanted them to pay , then she said to my uncle, “If they don’t pay, I want them to die,” Willie said in a 2021 interview, obtained by “Snapped.”
They entered the apartment with a key given to them by Wright, given to him by a family member of the victims. Bobby brought the drug paraphernalia and bandana to try to mislead the investigators. However, Willie smoked some of the marijuana, leaving his DNA behind.
Bobby and Willie waited until Nguyen and Ly got home. As they walked through the main entrance, Willie beat them unconscious with a baseball bat. His uncle then took them to the back bedroom and taped their mouths taped, according to the Star-Telegram.
Following his confession, Willie Guillory was arrested and charged with capital murder, according to Dallas-Fort Worth NBC-affiliate. KXAS-TV.
Detectives then arrested Bobby Guillory and charged him with two counts of capital murder. He told detectives that Dephne Wright offered him $10,000 to collect money from Nguyen and Ly but that their deaths were an accident.
“I really didn’t want to hurt anyone. When I put on this tape, I was really scared. I know what I did,” Bobby told sleuths in his videotaped interview, which was obtained by “Snapped.”
Bobby said Wright called the family’s $280,000 debt, but they were unable to pay it. When she learned of their million-dollar life insurance policy, she enlisted Chau Tran, who gave her the keys to her in-laws’ apartment, according to court documents.
Detectives served a search warrant at the home Wright shared with her husband and children. They discovered a ledger that listed her clients and the amounts she charged for a variety of supernatural services.
“There were records that purported to show that she was charging people 10, 20, 30, 40 thousand dollars for services rendered,” Alex said.
Dephne Wright was arrested for murder but refused to speak to investigators without a lawyer present.
In exchange for immunity, Chau Tran agreed to cooperate with the authorities. He said his family was terrified of owing Wright money because of his supposed supernatural powers. Tran claimed it was her mother-in-law Huong Ly’s idea to sacrifice herself so her life insurance policy could pay off the family debt, according to court documents. Wright, however, wanted the full amount and wondered why stop at just one life insurance policy.
In September 2018, Bobby James Guillory was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
A year later, in September 2019, Dephne Nguyen Wright, 47, was convicted of capital murder and solicitation of capital murder in the deaths of Long Nguyen and Huong Ly, according to KXAS. She, too, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Willie Guillory pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2025 at the age of 29.
For more on the case, watch “Snapped,” airing Sundays at 6/5c on oxygen or stream episodes here.
